Preparing to enter elementary school, Mi was very excited with her new school bag, pencil case, uniform skirt... and skipped around, talking and laughing on the first day of school. But just a week later, every morning, Mi ran into the closet to hide, then cried and wanted to stay home.

The teacher said that Mi was too slow and could not recognize letters. Whenever she asked her to stand up and read, she would hide under the table. Her parents were frantic and took turns teaching her every night. But Mi would forget the first word after hearing it, forcing her siblings to constantly run to the balcony to breathe or go to the kitchen to drink water to try to control their anger. Many nights, at 11pm, Mi's family was still studying with the lights on.

Disappointed with their inability to help their child improve, Mi's parents hired a tutor, but the child's condition did not improve. Finally, they took her to therapy.

Illustration: Just About Kids.

Master La Linh Nga, director of the Center for Research and Application of Psychological and Educational Sciences (Hanoi), said that, like the previous years, in less than a month after the opening of this year's school year, the center received many children with psychological problems when they first started school.

The transition from a play-based environment to a learning environment makes many first graders feel confused and have difficulty, but most of them adapt quickly. A small number of children who already have cognitive problems or are placed in an unsuitable environment, under pressure from parents and teachers, can experience increased instability, even becoming serious.

Expert Linh Nga said that some children have learning disabilities (like Mi's case), and parents do not realize it until their children go to school. In this child, all other activities are normal, and the child also performs quite well on the IQ test if there are no language questions.

Children are active and agile but have disorders in one or several psychological processes related to understanding or using language. For these children, the more you try to teach them in the usual way or put pressure on them, the more afraid they become and they do not absorb. They need professional intervention and a separate learning method.

In many other cases, parents bring their children to psychologists because their children, who have just started school, often talk back to adults, have difficulty concentrating, get angry easily, and do not respond when asked in class... But when they dig deeper, the specialist discovers that the core problem is the child's learning ability. Children who are slow to learn are scolded and compared, making them more afraid of learning, afraid of going to class, panicking and reacting.

Minh Duc is studying at a public school in Cau Giay district. A few days after the start of school, Duc's mother was called by the teacher to complain that her son was a poor student and would not sit still. One day when the mother came to pick him up, she saw his friends rushing after him to tell him: "Minh Duc didn't learn his lesson today", "Duc doesn't even know the letter A, lewd"...

"I knew my child was slower than his peers, but I didn't expect him to struggle this much in first grade. Now he wants to skip school every day. I try to make him go to class, but I can't let him stay home," the mother said, bursting into tears.

There are also many children with completely normal cognitive abilities who suddenly fear going to school and panic when entering first grade due to poor adaptability. At that time, parents need to help their children as soon as possible.

During her kindergarten years, little Bong in Hoang Mai, Hanoi was always loved by her teachers because she was well-behaved and not naughty. But shortly after entering first grade, every morning she cried and wanted to go home. She refused to eat lunch at school, always kept her rice in her mouth, and lost a lot of weight.

Her father is the principal of a secondary school but did not know how to help her, so he took her to see a psychologist. Here, Bong was diagnosed with an adjustment disorder, possibly due in part to her sensitive, anxious, and self-conscious personality combined with the change in environment.

After a period of treatment, Bong returned to school. When picking up his child a few days after returning to class, his father was surprised to hear from the teacher that he was playing chess in the school's multi-purpose building. He had signed up to participate when the teacher announced the health festival.

"During therapy, Bong learned chess to relieve stress and just played for fun. The fact that she volunteered to compete at school shows that she is completely confident and comfortable. When children are stressed and unstable in their studies, sometimes the best way to support them is not to try to teach them to keep up with their friends, but to help them relieve stress and be confident in a certain area," the psychologist explained.